The NZ drought

Hobbiton set to shrivel in Waikato drought

Bilbo Baggins' lush green shire could have the life sucked out of it after Waikato's undeclared drought restricted Hobbiton's water supply

Stuff,

1 March, 2013

It's the region's driest summer in five years and, with no rain in sight, Matamata best known tourist attraction may become three hectares of parched grass and stressed plants.

Losing the green image threatens to damage Hobbiton's international image and could cost thousands of dollars to fix, manager Russell Alexander said yesterday.

The film set, that featured in both The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, has enjoyed an unprecedented summer of business.

About 50,000 people walked through the grounds since Christmas under predominantly clear skies. Hobbiton is still an oasis of green in a sea of baking brown, but its fertile look comes courtesy of a sophisticated spring-fed irrigation system.

Hobbiton's resource consent conditions with the Waikato Regional Council state that when river levels drop to a certain level, so does their allowable take.

Before the restriction came into force the daily allowance was 200,000 litres but it has been squeezed to 67,000 litres.

"It's very serious," Mr Alexander said.

"I'm hoping to work with the regional council to figure out my options."

Waikato Regional Council spokesman Stephen Ward said the council sympathised with all water users but the restrictions in place reflected the new policies in the regional plan.

"For some time the regional council and district councils have been reminding people to use water wisely," he said. "We have also been reminding resource consent holders that their water takes may be restricted due to the low river flows. Those restrictions are now in place . . . where river flows have hit trigger levels.

"This is affecting places like Hobbiton, residential users, farmers with consents and other consent holders."

Yet the big dry, which is expected to continue unabated for at least the next 10 days, has been a boon for coastal regions.

Companies on the Coromandel Peninsula are reporting up to 20 per cent more business than last year and it is a similar theme on the west coast.

John and Marg Ritchie, of luxury Poet's Corner Lodge near Waihi, said business was up a good 15 per cent.

Emma King, of The Falls Retreat, said it was the summer that kept on giving.

"Business since January has doubled on last year's takings and all the hospitality businesses around here are saying the same thing," she said. "We put it down partly to the weather. And we were expecting it start to tail off once the schools went back first week in February, but it hasn't."

Coromandel Top 10 Holiday Park's Sean and Caron Steffert said the season had been "fabulous" thanks to the weather, with a large growth in domestic customers.

At the Raglan Kopua Holiday Park things are just as busy.

Office manager Mary Clark said takings were similar to last year's but "it just seems busier". "The weather has made all the difference.

"And the normal demeanour of people is so much better . . . everyone's happy," she said.


Meanwhile, across the Tasman....

Summer a scorcher but city set for a soggy autumn

SUMMER might be a fading memory for Sydneysiders but not for the record keepers

SMH,

2 March, 2013

The December-February stretch broke records for heat, with the nation's average maximum of 35.7 degrees beating the previous record set 30 years ago by 0.2 degrees. It was also 1.4 degrees above the long-term average.

''It was hot just about everywhere,'' a senior climatologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, Blair Trewin, said.

''[This summer] was in the top 10 for every mainland state,'' Dr Trewin said. ''Six of the hottest 10 summers [nationally] have happened in the past decade.''

Fourteen of the 112 locations monitored by the bureau broke records for the hottest day, the most for any summer.

Sydney and Hobart were among those that broke daily temperature records, Sydney with 45.8 degrees and Hobart with 41.8 degrees.

For NSW, it was the fifth hottest summer on record, with average maximums of 33.2 degrees, a full two degrees above normal.

State rainfall was about 7 per cent below average, despite rain gauges being 28 per cent fuller than normal in February alone.

''The coasts and ranges had a very different story to tell from the rest of the state,'' the head of climate monitoring at the bureau, Aaron Coutts-Smith, said.

While the state's northern rivers region mopped up after two big floods in just over a month, inland towns such as Bourke registered record low rainfalls for summer.

For Sydney, rainfall and temperatures were above average for both February and summer.

At Observatory Hill, the daily average maximum for the three months was 26.6 degrees, a full degree above above normal.

Last month's rainfall of 165.4mm was almost 40 per cent higher than normal for February, while the three-month total was 17 per cent above the average of 348.4mm, the bureau said.

The city and the state could expect rainfall at or above average for the autumn, Dr Coutts-Smith said.

Nationwide, the bureau said the average temperature for summer was 28.6 degrees, 1.1 degrees above normal, shading the previous summer record of 1997-98 by 0.1 degrees.

The September-February period, though, was also the hottest since records began in 1910.

The records fell even though the dominant El Nino-Southern Oscillation pattern over the Pacific remained in a neutral phase.

The three previous record summers for temperature were El Nino years, as were six of the hottest nine.

''On average over Australia, El Nino years tend to come out with a warmer summer,'' the manager of climate prediction services at the bureau, Andrew Watkins, said.

''The January heatwave was off the scale when you look at the successive days of high temperatures,'' he said.

Dr Trewin said when taking into account mid- to high-emissions scenarios for greenhouse gas output, the past summer would probably rank as an average one in 40 years' time.

By the end of the century, this summer would probably ''sit at the very cooler end of normal'', he said.